Environmental Determinism Makes A Comeback

Climate has been a major driver of armed conflict in Africa, research shows – and future warming is likely to increase the number of deaths from war.

US researchers found that across the continent, conflict was about 50% more likely in unusually warm years.

Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), they suggest strife arises when the food supply is scarce in warm conditions.

Climatic factors have been cited as a reason for several recent conflicts.

Problem is this paper does nothing of the sort. The “Supporting Information” material of the report makes this abundantly clear:

We denote civil war in country i in year t as warit. All
country-year observations with a civil war in progress are coded
as 1s, and other observations are coded as 0s. The PRIO data
extend from 1946 to 2006, but because of the limited temporal
availability of some climate data products (discussed below), and
because the political processes underlying conflict were likely
changing rapidly before 1980 as increasing numbers of African
countries gained independence, we focus our analysis on the
1981–2002 period.

Got that? Only 20 years are looked at in this study. Total. Given that no link between (warning: nonsense term) “climate change” could possibly be established over a mere 20 years worth of data, why was this “study” even written? How could it possibly be published? It would be as if I wrote a paper claiming to be based upon Boyle’s Law without ever discussing gas under pressure. It’s nonsense pure and simple.

This objection doesn’t even take into account the confounding variables rife in any such attempt to subject human behavior to environmental determinism, an idea real scientists tossed in the trash generations ago. Think of all the racist nonsense about the industriousness of cool climate “Nordic races” used to perpetuate the myth of white superiority in previous centuries. Now, compare those beliefs with this study focusing on the propensity of Africans to violence based upon their warm climate.

Really, we are comfortable going there nowadays?

But, hey, I’ve got a competeing theory. My theory says a warming climate will lessen the potential for conflict. Using North America as my test subject, and a more climatically friendly time period of 200 years, I will divide history into two segments; 1801-1900 & 1901-2000.